Lesson of Chatsworth Shooting : More gun insanity strikes our community

It ought to be frighteningly clear by now that any community can fall victim to the scourge of gun violence. One of the latest to suffer is Chatsworth, where a quiet, hard-working high school student was shot down Wednesday.

Gabriel Gettleson, 17, was wounded outside Chatsworth High School in the affluent west San Fernando Valley at 1:40 p.m., as he waited for his mother to give him a ride to his after-school job at a car dealership. The senior was shot three times after refusing to give up his backpack to at least two robbers. He later underwent surgery.

The incident is another example of why The Times supports a near-total ban on the private ownership of handguns and assault weapons, a ban that legally would leave those firearms almost solely in the hands of law enforcement officials. Other measures simply will not suffice.

Consider: Gettleson lived in a gated community in Northridge. He attended a school that has done much to protect its students. Administrators put a chain-link fence around the campus. Exemplary student groups met weekly to discuss anger management, conflict resolution and race relations. There were random weapons searches with metal detectors. The strict attendance and tardiness policies of alert and caring administrators encouraged students to get to school on time and to stay there once they arrived.

All those are commendable and sensible steps that offer a certain measure of protection. So are the ideas shared at an unrelated meeting at Reseda High School on Wednesday in which parents were encouraged to help create so-called “safe corridors” by stationing adults on street corners near schools at the beginning and end of the school day.

Equally valid is the call for a regular police presence at schools, a precaution now being taken in Santa Ana. But even that has its limits. In February, Jose Luis Lopez, a 17-year-old senior at Century High School in that Orange County city, was fatally shot just blocks away while en route to school.

What’s needed is a near-total federal ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns and assault weapons, with few exceptions. Nothing short of that will make our streets safer.